A new Hughes project ...

[uwe]

... which will undoubtedly go nowhere as I've given up hope he'll ever again do something with longevity again. Whether this neo-AC/DCish power trio is the way of the future for him ... Yeah, he can still do the screaming, but maybe that doesn't mean he still has to as a man his age and rock legend stature. The composition is right down to the harmonies in the chorus in the standard mold of Glenn fare in the more recent years. Won't shake the world.

Health warning: Vid contains women stirring. Or the other way around, stirring women. Dumb, but at least without charm. Oh, and in case you won't notice, Glenn endorses Orange amps.



I find this overtly "rawk!!!" approach Glenn has taken for, well, mostly commercial reasons in the last decade labored, even stilted. We all know where his heart truly lies and he just sounds more himself (or some people might say: like Stevie Wonder!) doing it.

[gweimer]

Yep...pretty predictable Hughes.  I love what he does, but he's lost the art of subtlety.  Nice riffs, solid song.   Just like the last 100 or so from him.  There were some nice moments in Black Country Communion, and I liked this one with Chad Smith and Dave Navarro behind him earlier.  I tried one of those Manne basses, and found it REALLY thin and metallic.



Too bad he doesn't do a little more of this...it's even a little Prince-like

[Pekka]

We all know where his heart truly lies and he just sounds more himself (or some people might say: like Stevie Wonder!) doing it.

I thought I was the only one who likes "Play Me Out"! Was a bit of a shock when I first heard it back in 1991 (I was 16) but got used to it pretty quickly. When I bought the classic Stevie Wonder albums a bit later it all made sense along with "This Time Around".

My copy is a double vinyl with the "Four On The Floor" session from 1979 featuring Glenn on vocals doing disco versions of songs like "Gypsy Woman", "There Goes My Baby" and a medley of Stones songs. Al Kooper, Jeff Baxter, Neil Stubenhaus, Paulinho Da Costa and other luminaries. The recordings were just a warm up but the proposed band (The Hollywood Horns) folded and some label put them out. Glenn didn't want to be credited and the album remained a secret to most of his fans until Conoisseur released it with informative sleeve notes by Simon Robinson. Period disco made just for fun but Glenn's vocals are astounding.

One of my favs from "Play Me Out" is the most funky track where Glenn tries maybe a bit too much on the vocal department but the band grooves like hell for a white rock guys from UK.


(OK, Mel and Dave weren't strangers to funk with Trapeze and Pat Travers was from Canada)

Haven't noticed it before but doesn't Glenn look a bit like Tommy Bolin on that album cover?

[Highlander]

You could say so, a bit...

Loved his voice with Trapeze... one of my faves was...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y__aFxGpxcI

... and here's a BBC broadcast circa '73...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLSzEi02cmM

[gweimer]

"Coast to Coast" was named the fan favorite on Hughes' website a few years back.  He rerecorded it with Hughes/Thrall.

The song that hooked me on him with Trapeze was this one.  I was also a big fan of Hughes/Thrall.  Still waiting for Hughes/Thrall II.

[Highlander]

Thrall is much the better guitarist but Galley's solo motif just fits so well... rip, Mel...

Hughes/Thrall is probably his best all-round work, imho and HTII might just be a disappointment now...

[uwe]

HTII was dumped as a project a few years ago - Glenn said as much on his website - because Glenn lost patience with Thrall's studio perfectionism (of course, exactly that perfectionism coupled with Hughes' more impulsive nature made the first HT collaboration so great, but consistency in career outlook was never high on Glenn's agenda).

The HT album is of course an AOR classic. From his Trapeze days, I like those two best:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85gcjXQc2ok&list=PL8a8cutYP7fqEbV0ubz7_1_ZDAiSVbp2s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHDcknNuIOs&list=PL8a8cutYP7fqEbV0ubz7_1_ZDAiSVbp2s

If you want to be nasty, you could describe both tracks as limp blue-eyed soul, but I just feel that he does this stuff best and most sincerely. I remember when Play me Out came out in 1977 to a confounded audience: those who knew him from DP were shattered about the radical style change; those who would have liked his new music would have never picked up an album from an ex-DP member and of course didn't. A magazine that had never anything but derision for anything related  to DP in any shape or form reviewed it favorably along the lines of "yes, this album is incongruous, a guy who filled stadiums playing white boy metal wants to rediscover himself as Stevie Wonder, but he does it with so much feel, sincerity and heart-felt love for black music, you cannot help but be impressed if that type of music does anything for you".

And this here is sooooo cute and hilarious, Trapeze's first (nicely melodic, but in 1970 quaintly old-fashioned sounding) single, when they were still a Moody Blues overawed 5-piece with a pop lead singer, yet Glenn's "backing" voice enters at 0:58 and totally upstages the lead singer within seconds.  He didn't last long.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxLSVhC9x_Y&list=PL8a8cutYP7fqEbV0ubz7_1_ZDAiSVbp2s

[Pekka]

Hughes/Thrall was a bit disappointment as it didn't turn out to be a funk rock album at all (I recall seeing it advertised as such in a Metal Hammer article) and some of the tracks are too AOR for my liking but it has some great moments. "The First Step Of Love" is probably the favourite from it.

Does Glenn play a fretless bass on it? Does a lot palm muting on it too.

Hughes/Moore/Nauseef version of G-Force could have been a killer but didn't happen unfortunately.

[uwe]

It was very much of its time, but the songwriting was top notch quality and has stood the test of time. After the commercial disaster of Play Me Out no one let him do what he does best. Same happened to the Feel album many years later - that bombed too.



Yet at the same time people go crazy about Michael Bolton!

I've never seen Glenn handle a fretless bass - neither live nor in the studio. Nor that he claimed to have ever laid hands on one. Generally, his penchant for percussive and snappy playing wouldn't be well-served with a toothless one and he is very much an intuitive, impatient player, can't really imagine him "exploring" a fretless. That said, he's a multi-instrumentalist, I'm sure he could coax something good out of a fretless. He does palm-mute like hell, I've seen him play live up close.

[Highlander]

Ooh... G Force... forgot all about them... saw them at the Marquee club, iirc... might even have some pics somewhere... they were pretty good...

[gweimer]

I love Feel.  I think it has a nice balance to it.  One thing Hughes does that is REALLY irritating, as in Uwe's link above, is those over the top vocal intros.  It's like he's drawing a line in the sand before the song ever takes shape.

I feel compelled to post my favorite Hughes/Thrall.  Just because.   

[Pekka]

I've never seen Glenn handle a fretless bass - neither live nor in the studio. Nor that he claimed to have ever laid hands on one. Generally, his penchant for percussive and snappy playing wouldn't be well-served with a toothless one and he is very much an intuitive, impatient player, can't really imagine him "exploring" a fretless. That said, he's a multi-instrumentalist, I'm sure he could coax something good out of a fretless. He does palm-mute like hell, I've seen him play live up close.

There was this interview somewhere where he talks about the band (G-Force) and getting cold feet and quitting on his birthday etc. There he said he was playing a fretless bass. I'll try to find it.

It seems Glenn was also about to form a group with Narada Michael Walden and Ray Gomez at that time. Another wasted opportunity.

[Pekka]

So Gary Moore and myself put a band together and we got a
drummer named Mark Nauseef and we started.. he started, a lot of the songs were
Gary's of course. A trio and it was very, very, very good. Nothing could...
There's some things stuff on tape but it can be very hard to find. I was
singing 60%, he was singing 40% and I was playing the fretless bass and it was
very, very cool. But because of my inability to cope with the situation... It
was probably the first thing since Purple after three years of being... let's
just call it... at home sitting on the couch drinking beer. I wasn't capable
of dealing with what I would consider to be a successful band. So I fired
myself on my birthday

http://www.glennhughes.com/ctc/issues/ctc_021.pdf

[uwe]

You live and learn, danke. I have a Glenn Hughes boot somewhere which features one demo from that aborted project - it sounded kick ass with a very funky slap bass (Hughes can slap, but funnily enough given his love for all of black music rarely does it).

Moore always tried to emulate Hughes Thrall, the whole Run for Cover album is basically a tribute to Hughes Thrall as was the G-Force album with ex-Captain Beyond Willy Daffern (Willie Dee was a silly alias) on vocals before. That said, Moore as a person was probably like his guitar playing, constantly clamoring attention and everything/every note is equally important and has to be just right. His record of playing with equals isn't great either. He drove an excellent bassist like Neil Murray nuts by telling him what to play. And he did the same thing with Ginger Baker in BBM. Now, granted, Baker is difficult, erratic and a chore, but one thing you do not have to do is tell him is how to play the drums. Even on the Run for Cover sessions, Moore was so insistent with how he wanted the bass parts (root note in eights and no slides of course), Glenn gave up at a certain point and just handed Moore the bass to do it himself.

I'll never forget how on the later Wild Frontier sessions, Moore preferred a drum machine in the end to a human drummer because he had become such an accuracy obsessive - and that ousted drummer was the guy from Hughes Thrall. 

[gweimer]

You live and learn, danke. I have a Glenn Hughes boot somewhere which features one demo from that aborted project - it sounded kick ass with a very funky slap bass (Hughes can slap, but funnily enough given his love for all of black music rarely does it).

Moore always tried to emulate Hughes Thrall, the whole Run for Cover album is basically a tribute to Hughes Thrall as was the G-Force album with ex-Captain Beyond Willy Daffern (Willie Dee was a silly alias) on vocals before. That said, Moore as a person was probably like his guitar playing, constantly clamoring attention and everything/every note is equally important and has to be just right. His record of playing with equals isn't great either. He drove an excellent bassist like Neil Murray nuts by telling him what to play. And he did the same thing with Ginger Baker in BBM. Now, granted, Baker is difficult, erratic and a chore, but one thing you do not have to do is tell him is how to play the drums. Even on the Run for Cover sessions, Moore was so insistent with how he wanted the bass parts (root note in eights and no slides of course), Glenn gave up at a certain point and just handed Moore the bass to do it himself.

I'll never forget how on the later Wild Frontier sessions, Moore preferred a drum machine in the end to a human drummer because he had become such an accuracy obsessive - and that ousted drummer was the guy from Hughes Thrall. 

Frank Banali?